People enjoy watching and listening to two people perform on the concert stage, and this is especially true when they are brothers or sisters. Here are stories of three musical sister teams who were touring concert artists who met with enthusiasm wherever they performed.
Maria and Teresa Milanollo
The Italian Milanollo sisters were virtuoso violinists who were celebrated precocious concert artists in Europe.Teresa was born at Savigliano in 1827 and her sister Maria was born there in 1832. They studied first in Turin,and from 1837 in Paris with Charles Philippe Lafont (1781-1839) and Francois Antoine Habeneck (1781-1849). They began to tour at an early age and travelled throughout Belgium. Holland and France, where they were received enthusiastically by their audiences. In 1843 they concertized in Germany and Vienna.
Unfortunately, Maria died in 1848 at the age of sixteen, but Teresa continued her career as a solo violinist until her marriage in 1857. She founded the Concerts des Pauvres in Marseilles and composed some small works. She died at Paris in 1904.
Ottilie and Rose Laura Sutro
The sisters were born at Baltimore, Maryland in 1870 (Rose) and 1872 (Ottilie). They received basic training in Baltimore and then were sent to study at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin. They began to tour in Europe until 1914 with programs of music for two-pianos which were very successful. The sisters then returned to America and continued to tour in their native land.
They were very popular with audiences and also with composers who dedicated several works to the girls. The most important composition was the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Op.88 (1915) by Max Bruch. Other pieces dedicated to them include works by Ernst Friedrich Karl Rudorff (1840-1916), a Prussian pianist and teacher; Eduard Schutt, German-Russian pianist and composer, who wrote an Andante and Scherzino for two pianos,dedicated to the Sutro sisters, and the German composers Floerscheim and Hollaender.
At the time of Ottilie's death at age ninety-eight in 1970, an auction was held to sell the Sutro's music and other effects.
Jelly d'Aranyi and Adila d'Aranyi Fachiri
These two sisters were concert violinists and great-nieces of Joseph Joachim. Jelly was born in Budapest in 1895 and Adila in 1889. They were both trained in Budapest at the Royal High School for Music by the noted Hungarian violinist Jeno Hubay. Jelly made her debut in Vienna in 1909. She went to England and settled there. She was honored by Ralph Vaughn Williams who dedicated his violin concerto to her in 1925. A year earlier Maurice Ravel had dedicated his "Tzigane" to Jelly. She gave the premier peformance of Szymanowski's Violin Concerto in 1930. She died in Florence in 1966.
Adila Fachiri also studied with Jeno Hubay and also trained with her great-uncle Joseph Joachim from 1905 to 1907. She toured with her sister and enjoyed a fine reputation as a soloist and chamber player. Bela Bartok dedicated his violin sonatas to her. Adila died in Florence in 1962.
Sources
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music Michael Kennedy Oxford University Press 1980
The New Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians The Macmillan Company 1929
For further reading about musical duos see Two-Piano Teams
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